


Falling in Love Like a Bullet

by sequence_fairy



Category: Bleach
Genre: Adultery, Canon Compliant, F/M, post-686
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-31 18:32:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12138537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sequence_fairy/pseuds/sequence_fairy
Summary: Tales of an endless heart/Curses is the fool who's willing/Can't change the way we are/One kiss away from killing





	Falling in Love Like a Bullet

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [ichirukimonth](http://ichirukimonth.tumblr.com). Prompt was 'bad timing'.

There are rules.

Ichigo makes more of them up every time Rukia and Renji come down to visit.

By mutually tacit agreement, Rukia also follows his rules - but he knows she hates them. Ichigo’s rules keep them safe, but he can tell that they grate on her. He hates that the easy camaraderie has fled and been replaced by this adherence to silent laws of when and where and how they can act around each other.

The rules are a mantra in the back of his mind–

_Don’t touch her._  
_Don’t look at her too long._  
 _Don’t be alone with her._  
 _~~Don’t fall in love with her.~~_

–the first time they break the rules, it’s not entirely on purpose.

It starts, like it always does, with shared glances and brushes of hands against the curve of her hips and the small of his back. It starts with too many glasses of wine, and flushed cheeks and Renji losing at cards and Inoue opening another bottle because they’re young and why not, and then, it stops - because Rukia has somehow ended up sprawled across Ichigo’s lap and Inoue is standing silently in the doorway while Renji is stone-faced behind her.

Rukia springs up as if burned.

After that, they go back to following the rules.

(Never mind that when Ichigo’s hand closes around himself in the shower, it’s violet eyes framed by dark hair and petite curves he sees before his vision whites out and his climax robs him of his breath.)

It’s not until years later–

(Wedding vows and a kid for each of them, and still, and still –)

–that it happens again, and this time, this time, they don’t just break the rules, they  _shatter_  them.

Rukia finds herself alone with Ichigo in his kitchen one afternoon in the spring, and before she knows it, he’s backing her up against the island, and her hands are in his hair. His mouth is a firebrand on her skin and she comes apart on his hand so fast that her head swims.

Afterwards, he bolts, leaving Rukia panting and disheveled in his kitchen. Rukia is left wondering whether she imagined the thrust and slide of his fingers. She doesn’t go after him.  

Later, when Inoue returns from the market, the three of them cook dinner and watch the kids play in the yard. Rukia leaves early, citing a headache, but she catches Ichigo’s gaze as she’s leaving, and his eyes are burning with the same kind of intensity they used to hold in the heat of battle. Rukia breaks their shared look deliberately before turning to Inoue to thank her for the afternoon and dinner.

Inoue walks her and Ichika back to the  _senkaimon_  because Ichigo volunteers to put Kazui down for the night and Rukia  _knows_  why.

“It was lovely to see you and Ichika-chan today, Kuchiki-san,” Inoue says, and then she covers her mouth with her hands. Rukia reaches out, forestalling the apology, and Inoue quiets before leaning forward to give her a hug. “Thank you for coming,” Inoue says, and Rukia feels something hot and terrible clogging her throat.

Rukia does not look back when she steps through the gate.

Back at the house, Ichigo feels the moment the gap between worlds closes and he clenches his fist around the spine of the storybook he’s holding. The cardboard protests weakly before succumbing to the pressure of his grip. Kazui is mollified only by the promise of a new copy of the book and Ichigo takes care to bury the ruined volume in the recycling bin, so Inoue won’t see it when she walks it down to the curb in the morning.

The air has turned sultry with summer heat before Rukia and Ichika are able to make another play date, and this time she arrives with Renji in tow. Neither Ichigo or Rukia make eye contact unless absolutely necessary, both of them staring over each other’s shoulders, and Ichigo is careful to keep Renji or Inoue between himself and Rukia at all times.

The enforced distance is necessary, Ichigo tells himself, as he watches the quiet possession with which Renji presses a hand to the small of Rukia’s back as she squeezes past him to get into the kitchen.

Inoue startles Ichigo with a touch to his elbow. He jumps and bobbles his drink, cold liquid spilling down the side of the glass and over his hand. Inoue’s mouth tightens and Ichigo tries for a smile. Inoue’s raised eyebrow tells him he doesn’t succeed and Ichigo lifts his drink to his mouth in an explicit refusal to explain. Inoue turns away to speak with Rukia. Ichigo slumps back against the kitchen counter.

For all his attempts to avert his gaze, it keeps falling back to her, and Ichigo gives in now that both Inoue and Renji are preoccupied. Rukia’s hair has gotten longer in the time since he’s last seen her, and there’s a subtle widening to her hips - one he is familiar with in the curves of his wife’s body and knows is because of the redhaired child that is sitting next to his son - and his hand flexes involuntarily where he’s gripping the edge of the countertop.

The gulf between them is oceans wide, and yet, Ichigo knows he could close it with one touch - he could reach out and press his hand between her shoulder blades when she leans over the table to admire Kazui’s colouring page, and he’d feel the warmth of her skin through the thin material of the summer dress she’s wearing and –

(He knows what that skin feels like, what it smells like, what it  _tastes_  like - he knows the exact places to press at the base of her spine to make her go boneless in his arms)

– this is why they have the rules, isn’t it?

It happens again the next time Rukia comes down, by herself. Kazui and Inoue are gone to visit Yuzu and her wife for the weekend, and Ichigo’s been rattling around the empty house for hours. Rukia arrives at the clinic door, the hem of her sundress floating around her knees. Ichigo invites her in, and then she’s backing him into the wall, mouth hot and hungry and desperate and he is drowning in the feel of her against him. They break apart, and stare at each other for a long moment, before Ichigo lifts a hand to the back of his neck, and belatedly offers her a cup of tea.

Rukia leaves before the tea brews.

Ichigo knows she’ll be back, and when she turns up the next day, earlier in the afternoon and backs him into the wall again, hands on his belt, Ichigo decides ( _finally_ ) to hell with his rules and flips them around so he can hike her up the wall and he is thrilled to discover that she has come prepared for this eventuality and is not wearing any panties.

It is the hottest summer on record, but nothing compares to the heat they generate between them.

Ichigo spreads Rukia across his kitchen table, and goes down on her with the single-minded intensity with which he used to end Hollows until Rukia is a quivering mess; until the only thing she can say is his name, over and over, her voice wrecked and strained. When he lifts his head, and licks his lips, she arches and all he has to do is lean back in and touch his tongue to her clit and she falls apart in waves.

The four of them and their children sit around that kitchen table the next weekend and all Rukia can see when she closes her eyes, is the way the sun spilled through the kitchen window and across Ichigo’s bare shoulders while his head was between her thighs.

Rukia returns the favour on an afternoon spent hidden away from prying eyes in the back of the park. She nips and teases and draws it out until his fingers clench in her hair and he is biting his lip nearly hard enough to draw blood, before she finally hollows out her cheeks and swallows him down, her hands moving in tandem with her mouth and when he comes, he arches like a bowstring and then drops back to the picnic blanket, completely spent.

There’s a long weekend near the end of August - and Ichigo doesn’t ask how Rukia manages to get the whole thing off duty  _and_  get down to the  _gensei_ without anyone asking questions. He makes up a conference, and kisses Orihime goodbye in the driveway.

Ichigo locks the hotel room door behind him, throwing the bolt with a decisive flourish and they don’t leave the bed for the next two days.

One day, in the early fall, they are nearly caught - Ichigo’s palm bears the marks of Rukia’s teeth from where she bit him as she came, her body shuddering between his and the wall, while Yuzu chatters about Kazui’s achievements in preschool that afternoon on the other side of his bedroom door.

Rukia leaves by  _shunpo_ , the fluttering curtains the only indication of her presence, and Ichigo ignores the way Yuzu’s gaze tracks towards the open window when he finally opens the door. He also ignores the way she says his name, low and filled with warning, pushing past her and down the stairs to greet Inoue with a kiss on the cheek and to swing Kazui up into his arms.

—

It ends with Ichigo gritting her name out from between his teeth as her body convulses around him. They stay like that, her thighs caging his hips, her hands on his chest, her hair hanging down over her face like a curtain they can hide behind – another layer of protection from the onslaught of the real world outside these walls.  He is watching her, his amber eyes darkened with the remnants of his desire and his thumbs caressing the skin at the tops of her thighs.

Once they both catch their breath, she rolls off him to curl into his side. His hand comes to rest on her flank, fingers tapping out an absent rhythm against her skin.

Renji is her  _husband_ , and it should be Renji’s body she’s curling into for comfort, and not the lean planes of Ichigo’s chest. She never wanted this – the sneaking around, the hiding, the _lies_  – but here they are, sprawled in this not-so-cheap hotel room; humming air conditioners the only sound in the devastation of the aftermath.

Rukia gets out of the bed.

She’s gathering her clothes up off the floor, and Ichigo’s watching her from where he’s sprawled on the bed. Rukia stops, holding the pooling black fabric of her  _shihakusho_  in a bundle in her arms.

“Stop it,” she says, so softly that Ichigo can barely hear her. “Please Ichigo, stop - stop watching me.”

“Why?”

“I can’t do this with you watching me,”

“So, what? It’s easier if you sneak out in the dark? Easier if you leave me here sleeping it off? Easier for you if I’m not watching you?”

“Yes,” she says, her voice a raw whisper. “Ichigo, I can’t - we can’t -  _this_ can’t - “

“Rukia,” he says, and levers himself to sitting. She clutches the bundle of clothes closer to her chest, like it’s a shield. He gets off the bed, and steps towards Rukia. He reaches out, she shies away, ducking under his hand and slipping around him towards the shower.

Ichigo sighs, and drags a hand down his face.

Rukia locks the bathroom door behind her.

Ichigo listens to the shower run, listens to the sound of Rukia washing her hair, and then the sound under the water changes and Ichigo sits, head in his hands, on the bed, the hotel sheets scratchy under his naked legs and knows that Rukia is sitting on the floor of the shower, knees to her chest, head buried in her arms, and he wishes he’d taken up smoking so he’d have something to do with his hands.

Later, Ichigo reaches for her hand across the tiny table in the cramped jazz bar they’ve gone to have dinner at, and Rukia evades his touch by picking up her glass of wine.

“Rukia,” Ichigo says, but she ignores him and turns to look at the band playing on the stage. Ichigo slumps back into his seat.

The band finishes their set, and Ichigo has swallowed three more glasses of whiskey before Rukia speaks.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she says, and Ichigo knew this was coming, but it still feels like a bullet to the chest. “I’m not coming back. I need to be with my daughter.”

Ichigo gropes desperately for words, and comes up empty.

“And you need to be with your son.” Rukia’s voice is so soft, and her eyes are so kind. “I’m sorry,” she says, and gets up, leaving him at the table. His last impression of her is the straight line of her spine and the sway of her hips, as she walks away.

Ichigo sits, for a long time after, long enough that eventually the staff gently kicks him out when they are closing the restaurant. He goes out into the cold night, and hunches his chin into the collar of his jacket, heading slowly back in the direction of their hotel. It occurs to him that in the morning, he will go home - back to Orihime and Kazui, and that he will never see Rukia again. At least not in this life.

He will have to explain to Kazui why his friend will no longer come to play, and he will have to explain to Orihime why the Abarais will no longer show for game nights and play dates and why hell butterflies will go unanswered.

For a moment, Ichigo imagines telling Orihime the truth. He sits on a park bench, overlooking the river and thinks about how her face will crumble and how the tears will build in her eyes and how she’ll sink, like she always does when overcome, to the floor, one hand against the wall.

Ichigo decides it will be kinder to lie.

The words will turn to ash in his mouth, but he will say them and Orihime will smile sadly and nod in understanding and she will put her arms around his waist and pull him close, and assume that his frown is the result of the premature loss of what should have been a lifelong friendship instead of what it really is, and Ichigo will bury his head in her hair, and try not to smell freesia where he should smell vanilla.


End file.
